Monthly Archives: May 2016

Haven’t done anything special after the Itaewon and Han river. Reason for that is we had mid-term exams, most of them went well in my opinion except one. I got 10/10 in English composition 1 and 57,5 or 58/60 in English Conversation 2. Korean quiz was 48/50, but my own major’s course was 30/100, Domain analysis and design. I was expecting bad results, but not that bad, so I was little bit disappointed. DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS “Domain analysis and Design” ! It is hard and too much to memorize, that’s right, memorize. Here they discourage you to learn anything, Korean education system courage you to remember everything, that applies on exchange students also.

For example, Koreans learn English in primary school just like Finnish people, but still in Universities most of Koreans cannot even form a decent sentence that make sense and worse case is that they don’t even understand if you ask them “Should we eat before team project”. It’s not a joke, My friend experience this and I experience similar situations many times.

Not to mock Koreans, but just pointing out how efficient is Korean Education system and how efficient is their study habits. This is how they study, they wake up 8-9 in the morning, go to classes. Comes back to dorm in afternoon, small nap and study till 3-4am and ofcourse playing mobile games or texting while studying and then sleep for 30min-4hours and alarm clock starts ringing about 8am, snooze till 8.30am and shower and off to class and so on. Koreans can’t even use Texas Instruments calculators, because it’s too advanced in Universities opinion. Also They have to memorize all the formulas in math/physics etc… Let’s change the subject before somebody get’s sand in that particular place.

Many people here take the same courses what they have done in their home university and I should have done the same, because there more time to travel and easier to understand. It might get boring, but you get good grades and still have time to experience South-Korea. OH yeah, and it will extend a bit of your studies.

Weather is getting really warm nowadays, I can’t stand to be in the dormitory room, average temperature in the dorm room is about 23-26 celcius degree. Outside it’s about melting point for Finnish people, about 22 celcius degree. Flowers like it, it is really colorful in campus area.

The rain in South-Korea in most of my experience it’s brutal, you will get really wet if you don’t have rain coat or umbrella. Luckily rain coats (few use only) cost like 1000won and decent umbrella is 5000won and they sell both almost everywhere. Koreans other hand don’t get wet, It’s weird. My friend and I walked same distance with Korean couple and we were soaked, but the couple is not. Some kind of wizardry. Usually next day looks much greener because of the rain and flowers starts to bloom.

We visited also Myeongdong, Seoul. Really popular shopping area, people say it’s mostly for girls, because of the amount of make-up stores, but positive suprise was that there was also quite a lot of stores for guys also. I spent more money there than the girls to be honest. There’s also Korean biggest UNI QLO, I really like that clothes store and also forever 21. Restaurants in that area are little bit over priced, but in the evening there will be a lot of street food stalls that are little bit cheaper.

This picture is from the side alley, I didn’t remember to take a picture of the main street. I also found this big bear, it’s soft actually. It’s like stuffed animal, but in really big scale.

My friends and I decided to get something else to eat, rather than Korean food. For this reason we head to Itaewon. Itaewon is known for being full of foreign people and restaurants. They have basic brunch and kebab places, oh I miss kebab so much !

Starter soup, bit creamy and sweet sea soup.

Main dish, not bad but too much dressing on top of the salad. Small advice when you do “expensive” salads, less is more, so less dressing is more enjoyable. These two dishes was 15000won in total. Salad, french fries, ham, soft scrambled eggs between bun and can beans.

Also in these parts they appreciate quality vodka. Finnish Finlandia vodka.

After done eating we went to see the Itaewon main street, nothing special was happening there, because it was quite early.

The green part is bottes, there was a lot of bottles, this was just fraction of this bottle wall. Nothing else to see in my opinion. There was some souvenir shops and random clothes stores that played EDM songs really loud. All most every restaurants, bars, cafes, clothes stores etc are really loud. They try to capture peoples attention with loud music. Good idea, but not very effective since everybody just goes away, because their ears hurts.

Subway stares, I think that pictures is from Han-river. So yeah, we took a subway to Han-river and when we got there, this gate greeted us.

Around this gate was a lot of Ajummas trying to give us delivery food flyers. Ajumma is hard to explain, middle ages women dressed in sporty windbreakers/clothes with big sun visor hats. Better just see it for yourself. They have this unique practical swag on.

Few nice looking building in further back.

A lot of people were having a picnic there, biking around, some were doing skateboarding and few walk their dogs. We also rode bikes along this river. We rented for and hour and it was just 3000won/bike. Not bad I think.

We walked for while and saw this water river like fountain and follow it for awhile.

We end up in the middle of this water fountains. Really cool looking place.

They were taking pictures in the fountain with huge tennis ball. After long day of walking and riding a bike we head back to dormitories.

That’s all for now.

Kind regards,

Tam

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